The Multipolar World
It’s the economy, stupid
Many Americans have not realized we no longer live in a unipolar world where the US as the sole superpower sets the global agenda. China, Russia and the US are today’s three major military powers. The US and China lead the world economically while Russia lags behind. Yet, the Russian economy has been improving the last two decades primarily due to its large energy reserves. Europe’s decision to deindustrialize has seriously damaged that region’s economies.
The Bipolar World.
It was the end of World War II and the independence of India that signaled the fall of Britain as a global power. After its first successful atomic test in 1949, the USSR became one-half of a bipolar world that characterized the Cold War. The US and USSR as the globe’s two superpowers would be squaring off against one another.
The US-USSR divide defined the world for the next four-and-a-half decades. The overriding goal in US defense structure and foreign policy was to counter the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
This changed dramatically in just a matter of months in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke-up and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. The USSR disintegrated into 15 separate republics. Military and economically, the former USSR was in its death throes struggling to survive. The United States was the sole remaining super-power.
The Unipolar World.
In January 1991 it was obvious the Soviet Union was starting to collapse. It would be gone before the year was over. President George HW Bush proclaimed a “a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind -- peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.” Bush’s “new world order” was a unipolar one led by the US that would become the global standard for the next quarter century.
Along the way, European states attempted crash America’s economic hegemony by launching the European Union in 1993. There have been some successes and failures of the EUs efforts. While few European leaders address it publicly, the decisions to deindustrialize and commit to an open borders concept have proved catastrophic, particularly in the past dozen years or so. Millions of refugees have flooded Europe crushing social systems and skyrocketing crime.
The Multipolar World.
It was at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 that Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the world on notice that the unipolar world was over. Putin wanted the world to know Russia wanted a seat at the table. He made the case the unipolar world never delivered on the promises of greater peace and stability. He claimed the US unilaterally launching wars under the imprimatur of NATO or to defend democracy proved destabilizing.
Just a handful of years later, there was little doubt China had become the third global power. Since 1990, China has dramatically emerged as an economic and military force. By the twenty-teens, China’s GDP surpassed that of the European Union, according to World Bank data.
Similarly, China’s military was no longer just two-million foot soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese Navy combat ship totals have exceeded the US fleet in recent years and China is on track to double its combat fleet size between 2000-2030.
Numerous national security experts insist China harbors bold territorial ambitions. Those who make these claims have not been paying attention. Or they are studiously ignoring the facts. In its 4,000 year recorded history, China has not invaded countries with the aim of conquering them. Yes, it has engaged in border and territorial disputes. Yes, it has sent troops to aid allies during times of war (e.g. Korea and Vietnam). China has done exactly what the US did in WWI and WWII. Throughout its history, China has been the country that has been invaded rather than been the invader.
Yes, China claims Taiwan is an integral part of greater China. Yet, that is the identical position of the America. The US adopted a ‘one China’ policy in 1979 with the Taiwan Relations Act. Only 11 countries and the Vatican have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The US is not one of them.
China has been industrializing for decades. There isn’t much they do not manufacture today. Aside from dollars, what else does China seek from the United States? Very little. To bolster its manufacturing, China seeks control, if not outright ownership, of precious resources. It doesn’t need to seize mines by force. It merely buys them from the owners. President Donald Trump attempted to stymy this with an executive order that restricts China from “targeting the crown jewels of United States technology, food supplies, farmland, minerals, natural resources, ports, and shipping terminals.”
US policymakers have been focused almost exclusively on the military strength of both China and Russia. However, those two countries appear driven on increasing markets for their exports: manufactured goods from China and oil and gas from Russia. The facts do not support the idea that either China or Russia is intent on global domination.
American University Professor David Vine, who studies US troop presence abroad, reports the US has approximately 750 military bases, big and small, in about 80 countries worldwide. In 2021, there were reportedly 170,000 US troops stationed overseas. Rounding out the top 5 countries with overseas bases are: UK (60), Saudi Arabia (21), Russia (12), and France (5). China has just one overseas military base.
It is extremely difficult to engage in world domination when a country has no significant forward-basing.
Russia.
Anyone who has watched Russia since 1991 and especially since Putin’s assumption of the presidency in 2001, realizes the highest priority Russian goal has been to modernize a nation that was decades behind the West economically. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Russians lived in abject poverty compared to the developed world. Russians would continue to suffer throughout the 1990s, while oligarchs became billionaires plundering the nation’s resources.
Under Putin the average Russian annual income increased more than 20-fold from $432 (2021) to $9,840 (2023). Despite western sanctions, Russia had one of the fastest growing economies in all of Europe in 2024 with 3.63% annual growth in GDP. The three loudest voices urging continued conflict with Russia (in Ukraine and elsewhere) were among the worst performing economies last year: UK (1.08%), Germany (0.01%) and Finland (-0.1%). As Europe deindustrializes, Russia is creating a manufacturing-based economy and is becoming increasingly self-sufficient. Russia has replaced its lost European trading partners with Asian trading partners.
A pair of neocons recently penned an article claiming a prime reason why Russia invaded Ukraine was due to “an asymmetric balance of power.” Russia is bigger and militarily more powerful and Ukraine is much too weak to defend itself so invasion was a natural sequence of events, they argued. This claim is easily dismissed as absurd. Belarus also borders Russia, has one-fourth the population of Ukraine, and a military about 1/20 the size of Ukraine’s armed forces; yet, Russia has not invaded Belarus due to a power imbalance.
Same is true of Kazakhstan (110,000 troops), Kyrgyzstan (23,000), Tajikistan (9,500), Uzbekistan (70,000) and Mongolia (35,000). The New York Police Department has a bigger uniformed officer corps (36,000) than the militaries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia. Russia doesn’t view them as threats as they are not seeking to place NATO troops on or near Russia’s border.
Russia got involved in Georgia and Ukraine for the exact reasons Putin warned George Bush about in 2008. At the NATO council meeting in Bucharest, Romania in April 2008 Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko told attendees that Ukraine unequivocally was seeking full membership in the alliance. Bush aggressively supported the request and urged swift membership.
After Yushchenko’s remarks Putin warned Bush in-person that Ukraine membership in NATO was “a direct threat” to Russia and a provocation that would cause Russia to partition eastern Ukraine and Crimea from the rest of the nation.
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine and the Crimea are about 60% ethnic Russian and 10% Crimean Tatars, an ethnic Turkic group indigenous to the Crimea. Nearly all speak Russian as their primary tongue. The Crimea had been part of greater Russia for centuries until transferred in 1954 as an autonomous republic to be administered by Ukraine. At the time, that transfer was viewed as merely an administrative matter as the Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Penciling-in borders of the new republics after 1991 changed that. After the USSR dissolved, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was established in Ukraine with its own parliament and state leaders.
A much larger concern of the Russians beyond the safety of ethnic Russians is the Crimea has been the home of its Black Sea Fleet for 250 years. To have NATO forces literally outside the gates of the Sevastopol and Balaklava naval bases in Crimea is as deeply concerning to the Russians as it would be if China had military forces deployed in San Diego County surrounding US military bases in San Diego. To pretend otherwise is foolish.
Mark Hyman is a 35-year military veteran and an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
Mark welcomes all news tips and story ideas in the strictest of confidence. You can reach him at markhyman.tv (at) gmail.com.